


new puppets for old gods

by quagmires



Category: DCU, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mental Illness, Possession, this leans more towards movie canon than comic canon but it mostly exists outside of both, this might have more than two chapters we’ll see, traumatic injuries, yeah...this is the exact opposite, yknow those cases where they blame demonic possession but it was really just mental illness?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:46:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22465123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quagmires/pseuds/quagmires
Summary: june is done with the universe. the universe is not done with june.
Relationships: June Moone/Enchantress
Comments: 11
Kudos: 28





	1. act i - bones

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Mayfly and the Endless Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20424512) by [dogtit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogtit/pseuds/dogtit). 



June’s body bounced like a rag doll, thudding against every jutting rock on her way down the narrow chute. Slick with moss and moisture and the fresh rainfall from yesterday, the walls hadn’t made for a very good surface to hold onto when rappelling down. One wrong step and June had gone from abseiling to careening down the cave before she could even hope to right her wrongs. Attempts to grab the slack of her rope again had ended in ruined gloves and burned, blistered fingers as it ran shorter and shorter. After that, her only chance had been to cover the back of her head and pray she landed in one piece as she fell down, down, down...

The natural chimney went so deep into the earth that when she had kicked a rock into it, she couldn’t even hear it hit the bottom. And yet, when she was plummeting into darkness, it didn’t even feel like it took that long for her to reach the end. One, two, three rocks she smacked into at every possible angle. Maybe she lost consciousness at that point (she at least lost count of how many times she hit the wall), because the next thing she knew she was lying at the very bottom with her helmet knocked askew and the rope lying over her in coils. Not to mention the blood seeping from the open blisters on her hands. 

Rule number one: never leave your group. That was like, the golden rule of group digs. Even if you had a doctorate and were in charge of the whole excavation, going off on your own was a death sentence. June knew as much, after her favorite professor had done exactly that when she was in college. Though, some of the details were still unclear: like why he’d gone off in the middle of the night, and why he hadn’t taken anything with him, and why his body still hadn’t been found...

Well, June was here in the middle of the day with all her stuff, and the odds still weren’t looking great for her. This wasn’t a marked cave, nor one that was anywhere near the dig site. But her survival instinct was as strong as the sense of curiosity that had landed her here, and her chances of being found at the bottom of a hole in the ground were about as great as her finding another way out of here. She had to keep moving.

But her own body felt like dead weight as she tried to drag herself off the ground. A searing pain down her spine and her uncoordinated legs sparked new fears of greater injuries and a complete inability to help herself get out of here alive. No matter how hard she struggled, it wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been. 

Shit.

When she got to her feet — eventually, after gritting her teeth through the pain and shedding several tears — those fears were only half-realized. She stood on her own, to her relief, but her knees wobbled, her toes pointed inwards. No matter how hard she tried to correct her stance, something just wasn’t sitting right. Fractured vertebrae were probable after a fall like that. The adrenaline of falling down a deep hole had dulled the initial pain of bouncing off the rocks, but she wouldn’t be able to ignore those injuries forever. 

But she was upright (somewhat), and she could still walk (for now). It was a good sign. The universe wasn’t done with her just yet. 

One step into the cave. June adjusted her helmet and smacked the headlamp a few times. It flickered still, but there was enough light to see the cave opening up before her.

Two steps. The spasm that suddenly shot down her spine nearly toppled her over entirely. She had to brace herself against the cave wall until it subsided. 

Three steps. Her footfalls stopped echoing and started...crunching. She looked down — in the light of her headlamp, beneath her boots, was a good three-inch carpet of old bones. They stretched ten, twenty, thirty feet ahead...they crept up the walls the walls, even covered parts of the ceiling. 

June stared in awe, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. The room was filled with hundreds, if not thousands of ancient skeletal remains. Many were animals, some as large as cattle and others as small as waterfowl. But most...most appeared to be human. Skulls stacked high like pillars, crumbled remains of clay jars with teeth spilling out of them, femurs arranged on the floor to create a massive pentagram-like symbol. Crude decorations that were centuries old, if not millennia. It was morbid and undiscovered and beyond fascinating. 

But it was the center of that pentagram that housed the most captivating feature of the entire cave. 

A towering shrine carved from stone sat amidst the sea of skeletons — perhaps it had once depicted the likeness of a god, but those details had long since worn away. Now the face was blank and smooth, but nevertheless seemed to stare eerily down at June. The remnants of a crescent atop its forehead curved upwards like devil horns. And cupped hands, oddly untouched by erosion, sat outstretched to present the small jar held within them. 

_j u n e..._

The little urn wasn’t unlike the canopic jars of Ancient Egypt, though it was too small to properly house any meaningful organ. And besides...evidence of those practices were found in the northernmost parts of Africa, not South America. 

The lid of the jar was what reminded June the most of the embalming process: it was crude and fragile-looking, but plainly resembled a human head. It was topped with brittle black hair, that looked as though it may have once been actual human hair (although June knew such a specimen surviving in the open air for so long would be near-impossible, so that couldn’t have been the case). It wore the same crescent-shaped symbol on its forehead as the statue did, so the young doctor assumed this _was_ the likeness of a god, though it was a god she was wholly unfamiliar with...

_j u u u u u n e..._

By all accounts, it was a fantastic find. Human sacrifice wasn’t uncommon in some ancient South American cultures, but this was unlike anything she was aware of. This was more like a mass grave, decorated with the remains of the deceased much like the catacombs beneath Paris. Perhaps if she studied the bones a little further, she could gather more insight on how and when they died. 

But the little jar in front of her was begging for far more of her attention than they were. 

Her headlamp flickered, and for a brief moment before the battery kicked back in, the cave was plunged into shadow. The split second of darkness was all it took for the jar to disappear from its place, and for June’s hands to feel suddenly heavy. Wide eyes fell upon the dusty clay urn wrapped in bloody, burning fingers. It was heavier than it looked, and yet it felt like it contained nothing at all. 

She knew she had to put it back. The oils from her skin alone could damage it, not to mention all the blood. She was lucky it hadn’t crumbled to dust immediately. 

_J U N E_

The jar buzzed against her skin — warm, pulsing, _alive_. It felt like a sponge, drawing the blood from her veins and sucking up every drop. The longer she held it, the longer she looked at it, her vision tunneled until all she could see was the ancient artifact in her hands. A low drone rushed in her ears as her fingers crept up to the stopper. Her grip on it tightened, working into the grooves where whatever adhesive they’d used was impressively stubborn, even now. June grunted a bit as her hand shook with the effort. And that buzzing just kept getting louder, louder, louder—

The seal gave way with a small popping noise, before crumbling between June’s fingers like chalk. The silence that followed was deafening and endless. June was left staring at the open jar, at the dust swirling from the disturbance, shocked at her own disregard for history once she came to her senses. What had she done? 

She watched as the dust continued drifting through the light of her headlamp. It swirled in the air, slow and mesmerizing, before it began to shiver like a single mass and turn dark in color. What was once harmless particles was now becoming inky, sinister tendrils of smoke rushing to be free of the jar. They curled around June’s form, reminiscent of great snakes that choke their prey to death — but instead of squeezing and crushing her, they snuffed out the flashlight entirely. Plunging the whole cavern into definitive darkness. 

And laughter. Peals of laughter bounced off the cave walls, echoing and feeding into each other until June felt like she was drowning in the noise. 

Oh god, what _had_ she done? 

Then, just like that, the sound was sucked back into one corner of the room. June’s eyes were slow to adjust to the complete pitch black, but it didn’t take long for them to make out two pinpricks of light. A pair of fiery, glowing embers, floating across the burial chamber from her. They made an odd clicking noise, low and guttural. The sound of punctured lungs struggling to take breath; the kind of cracking and popping she imagined a human spine would make if it was stretched out like taffy. A death rattle if ever she heard one. 

The embers swayed, mesmerizing and beautiful, and moved closer. From the shadows amid shadows, the void of all light that apparently existed in that corner, the owner of the piercing eyes and rattling growl crawled forward. 

It wasn’t so much a person as it was an animated corpse. Ratty black hair and ashen, sallowed skin. Extremities that gradually turned black as if plagued with a foul rot. Body covered in old silks and rusted chains and frayed ropes. A crescent moon resting atop her forehead, the peaks jutting upwards like devil horns. 

A god. Or something much worse. 

She sat crouched on her hands and feet like a feral thing, unspeaking, but stalking ever closer over the piles of skeletons. Cautious, but predatory nonetheless, until she was close enough for June to smell the stagnant water and rot and _death_. 

And June was rooted to the spot, with no hope of outrunning such an entity. Her knees shook with the effort of staying upright, her entire lower body screaming in growing agony. 

“Dr. Moone?!” 

The familiar voice of one of the other archaeologists shouted down from above. It echoed down the chimney and into the cave, and was soon followed by more concerned voices calling her name. A search party. Thank god. 

Even the old god stopped growling, her eyes darting to the entrance briefly. Then she held a blackened finger to her lips and glared. 

_shhh..._

June wanted to scream, but the sound caught in her throat. Her knees trembled dangerously, and as another painful spasm shot through her back, they gave way and hit the collection of bones beneath them. The pain pounded through her head like a second heartbeat, searing and sharp and dizzying. She swayed, tears pricking in her eyes. 

There was going to be nothing of her left to find. 

Now eye-level with her, the old god reached out to June and grasped her face between cold, wet hands. Her eyes burned like tiny flames, and the archaeologist felt her whole body prickle with numbness as they bored into her own. 

_you are weak,_ muttered the creature, though her lips never once moved, _you are broken. you will die down here, june. and you will die alone. poor, poor june..._

One hand began to stroke her hair, rough and pitying like a toddler petting a dog. When the tears in June’s eyes started to fall, the old god wiped them away, smearing black mud in their place. 

_but not if we’re together,_ she continued to whisper conspiratorially, _together we will both be strong again. one to help the other, yes? such a shame to waste a young life. down here your body will rot. it will not feed me like it might have once done. isn’t that a shame?_

“A shame...” June agreed listlessly. She sounded distant to herself. Her voice echoed back and forth across the stone walls, carrying up to the others above, but she could barely hear it — and she could barely hear the shouts to hold tight, that they’d be right down to get her out of there. 

The old god gripped the back of her helmet, and butted their foreheads together with another slow cacophony of clicking noises coming from her throat. 

_yes, that’s right. so obedient. so loyal. you will do nicely, june moone..._

Slowly, June felt her head tilt back. Her body was beginning to shudder with pain. Fresh tears mixed with the mud on her face and darkened her vision entirely, but in her blindness, her other senses flared. 

The rickety death rattle grew louder and louder, until she was sure her eardrums would burst. It engulfed her entirely. 

Her nose stung as she choked on the sickening stench of decay. 

Bile rose in her throat, bitter and acidic at the back of her mouth. She found herself suddenly breathing in thick smoke. It tasted of charcoal and must and filled her lungs until she couldn’t even gasp for air. 

Her nerve endings burned, pulsing and screaming in pain before they were snuffed out altogether and she went numb. 

Everything stopped. The pain, the noise, the thick stench filling her nose and mouth. All was silent. All was still. The chaos cleared. And June was lying flat on her back, eyes clear of mud but rolling in her head as she tried to focus on the bodies abseiling down from above. The back of her head blossomed with heat. Her helmet was gone and something warm and sticky matted her hair together on the cave floor. 

“She’s here!” a voice yelled. Heavy boots thudded on the ground beside her and rushed closer. It wasn’t until a pair of warm, sun-tanned arms peeled her limp body off the floor that she realized how cold she was. 

So, so cold...

She couldn’t make out the man’s face, but she didn’t need to. The familiar smell of cuban cigars and strong coffee painted a clear enough picture. June opened her mouth to speak to her mentor, one of her old professors, her most trusted colleague, but only a strangled whimper made it through. 

“Shh, it’s okay. We’re here,” Dr. Carver hushed her. His voice was wavering in a way she’d never heard before, “Christ, June, everyone’s been looking for you all night...”

All...all night? She started her hike in the mid-morning...It couldn’t have been much more than an hour or two since she left camp...

The thud of more boots hitting the ground echoed around the two of them. More unfocused figures gathered in her vision. Several pairs of hands poked and prodded her, removing her harness, checking her pulse, carefully assessing the damage. Distant voices talked loudly at her, as if they were at the bottom of this well and she was standing at the top. She felt so very far away from them all. 

“She’s losing consciousness,” a barely familiar voice said, panic clear in their tone, “Get that sling down here, we need to get her to a hospital pronto.”

Her surrounding shifted and spun as she was delicately slid and strapped into what could only be a sling brought from their medic tent. She wouldn’t be the first archaeologist to fall while on a dig. 

For what felt like a long time, she was weightless. Dark figures crawled along the walls of the chute — giant spiders stalking her closely. Somewhere deep down, she knew they were her colleagues, but it was too much like a nightmare. This was all just one big nightmare. She just needed to wake up. 

“Dr. Moone, can you hear me?”

More new voices surrounded her, but this one was particularly clear. A sharp gasp of humid air rushed her lungs as the sling was laid in the grass, gentle but painful. She stared up at endless tree trunks holding aloft a rich canopy of vines and great people-sized leaves. Their moisture dripped onto her face like rain. The sun shone glaringly in one of her eyes. Then it swung across the sky to shine in the other, then it turned off with a click. 

“Delayed pupil response in the left eye, no response in the right. She’s got some serious brain damage.” They sounded panicked. The owner of the voice leaned over her face, obscuring her view of the forest above, but they were still a dark, featureless shadow. 

“June,” they repeated, louder this time, “Can you hear me?”

 _don’t listen to them, june,_ a voice purred, sourceless but clear above all the others, _you will live. we will both live._

The view of the figures and the rainforest shivered sideways as June’s eyes rolled back in her skull. Her mouth tasted of blood and battery acid. Despite her extensive injuries — which by all accounts she couldn’t make sense of — her muscles seized and her back arched sharply off the ground. The murmuring around her turned to shouting and chaos but she heard none of it. Her vision went blank and all she heard was an endless, monotonous whine.

She felt weightless once more, but the direction she was traveling in was beyond her. Or if she was traveling at all. June Moone was all but dead to the world around her. Her consciousness extended only to the feeling of a rough, pitying hand stroking through her blood matted hair. 

_we will be strong again._


	2. act ii - vomit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some bodies may be temples,  
> but all are ruins at your feet

This must be what dying is like.

That was the only distant thread of thought June had. Her body, her consciousness, was suspended in a vast space of nothing. An infinite plane where she wasn’t sure even she existed. And she was okay with that. It was serene, beautiful, terrifying. Full of possibility and yet perfect and complete as it was. 

To call it ‘nothing’ was too generous. Nothing implied the absence of something, and this space felt beyond anything that complex. If this was dying, then maybe it was only a brief moment of it, she thought; extended, expanded, drawn out like a line for her last few sparks of brain activity to chase before it faded out and she melted back into nonexistence for good. 

_no,_ rasped a resentful voice, _death isn’t quite so kind._

Quite suddenly, the nothing became everything. It rushed up to meet her, and within nanoseconds death was only an unreachable goal in June’s mind. 

Now she was no longer floating without direction, but instead felt the weight of gravity bearing down on her. She lay on her back, half-inclined, her entire body simultaneously numb and uncomfortable and in unbearable agony. Searing halogen light filtered into her eyes as they opened — she tried to shield them, but her arms were sluggish and heavy. Attempts to turn her head away from the light resulted in a similar response (or lack thereof) and a newer, more unpleasant sensation. 

Something hard and smooth scraped against the inside of her throat. Reaching down into her lungs like a horrid, violating hand. It made her gag and choke immediately, her already blurry vision further obscured by stinging tears. She tried to cough and splutter against the tube, but it remained steadfast. 

Her chest immediately tried to heave in the first gasp of air in what felt like a long time — but oxygen did not come freely. Somewhere beside her, something beeped so sharply and rapidly that her eardrums twitched. And the rhythm of her breathing was only allowed to exist within that same rhythm. 

It was only then, she realized she wasn’t conscious. Yet not entirely unconscious. Something wholly and terrifyingly in between. 

The more she dripped back into land of the living, the more chaotic everything became. 

All around where she lay, more shadowy figures surrounded her. Some waited quietly at her feet while others loomed directly overhead. Others stood nearby, but seemed to ignore her altogether. 

One stood closer than the rest, shining another small, bright sun in her eyes. 

“June?” it prodded. The voice was slowly fading into focus above all the background noise. “Can you hear me?” It was deep, laced with a thick accent she couldn’t place.

June tried opening her mouth around the tube to speak, to tell him she could, but her muscles jammed and the sounds caught in her throat. Her breath caught too. She tried to heave in more air, but her lungs stubbornly refused to inflate. Somewhere in her periphery, the beeping began to speed up as she immediately panicked. 

It seemed the shadows panicked as well. There was a rush of noise, a blur of movement and color and light. The very basics of her vision. In the entropy, she tried to ask someone, anyone, what was happening. 

“Where am I? Who are you? Why am I so _cold_?”

No sound came out. Nobody answered. 

She was trying her best to scream as loud as possible, but no sound, no air came out. The long, plastic tube was an obstruction, and try as she might, her hands wouldn’t reach up to pull it out. 

Was this torture? Put through pain and discomfort while unable to struggle — it sure felt like it. 

By luck, whether good or bad, her awareness petered out almost as quickly as it had come to be. Liquid ice distilled into her right arm, flowed through her whole body until she was below freezing. If she could breathe, she felt like she’d see the air in front of her. But she didn’t take breath. Instead, she closed her eyes and sank, slipped, submerged, back into the emptiness.

.

_isn’t it painful?_ the girl in the corner of the room asked.

June opened her eyes and, unrestrained, sat up to stare at her. 

“Isn’t what painful?”

_living._

With a roll of her ember-bright eyes, the shadowy figure tilted her head around until her face was no longer hidden behind ratty curtains of hair. It stared intently at June, and spoke across the room without once uttering a single word aloud. _i don’t know why you do it._

June found herself furrowing her brow — perplexed, but not to the extent she should’ve been. Deep down she knew this was odd. Beyond odd. But, like all dreams, it made sense in the moment. 

“Aren’t you living?” she asked, stupidly. 

The old god giggled. A vacant smile tugged at her lips as the laughter echoed around the room — growing, consuming, smothering. 

_i don’t live,_ she mused. She spoke in a language June had never heard before (and had a feeling hadn’t existed in a long time) and yet, she understood it perfectly, _i exist. i’ve existed for thousands of years and i will exist for thousands more. we’ve had this conversation, june. many times now._

June frowned. “I...I don’t remember.”

She chewed her lip and stared down at her hands. Her nails had grown quite long without her being able to cut or bite them down. She hated having long nails. 

When she looked up again, the old god stood by her bedside. She seemed to fill the whole room with her presence, but she couldn’t have been much taller than June herself. Yet her very aura obfuscated the space around them until it swam like a desert mirage. 

Blackened and bruised, her hands reached out to cup June’s face. They held her gently, tenderly, and those dark eyes beheld her with much the same nature. June felt small and hot-faced under her stare. 

_that’s a shame._ With an ethereal sigh, she sat herself beside June and leaned in close. The archaeologist instinctively ducked her head and shut her eyes as cold lips pressed to her forehead. Behind her eyelids, past conversations came to be. No clear memories, just knowledge she suddenly possessed. 

“Oh.” she whispered. Had those always been there? She glanced up at the other girl, who had retracted her touch and now sat cross-legged at the end of June’s bed. 

It was a small hospital bed. Stiff linen, a pillow that was soft but uncomfortable at the same time, metal guard rails either side that bit coldly into her arms. Around them, the room was otherwise empty and dark. The machinery, normally beeping and buzzing, sat as silent, eerie shells of themselves in the corner. Everything appeared as if viewed through a minty green light. It was nauseating to look at, so June looked instead at the corpse in front of her. 

It played and fidgeted with impossibly long strands of dark hair, peeked out from behind them as if it was shy. 

No, June corrected herself — she wasn’t shy. She was curious. Coy. Calculating. But confident. 

_i’m flattered that my little moon enjoys my company,* it finally said, *i’ve come to crave our nightly conversations, even if you never remember them in your...current state._

She stopped playing with her hair then, and crawled forward on the bed until she was nearly in June’s lap. _but you must be careful,_ she warned, eyes wide and pleading, _please, please be careful, my june._

“Careful? Of what?”

The old god continued without pausing to answer. _much is at stake. you mustn’t linger too long here. we are in between. incomplete. incorporeal. one of us must always be present in the waking world. but first one of us needs to wake up._

June blinked, feeling dumb. “How do I wake up?”

_you’ve already been trying,_ she assured her, grabbing her face once more, _each time you have tried to rouse from an impossible slumber and each time they have denied you. you must try again. the longer we remain like this, the weaker we are._

“I-I’ll try again!” June insisted. The being in her lap seemed pleased with this, humming softly. She nudged June to lay back in her bed, and rested her chin against her sternum. Bright embers watched her contentedly from the backdrop of pitch-black sclera. It seemed, oddly enough, that the occult creature enjoyed this kind of closeness between them. She closed her eyes and nuzzled close — the shadowed aura radiating from her body almost seemed to purr. 

Then, slowly, a sly grin curled onto her lips. 

_if you wish, i can wake up in your stead._

June’s chest felt tight and heavy. An instinctual fear was beginning to set in, and with it, came some lucidity. Some awareness of just how bizarre her current situation was. How potentially malicious such an offer could be. “Who...Who are you?” she finally asked into the silence. 

She was afraid she wouldn’t get an answer. At the same time, she feared what the answer might be. 

The creature looked up at her, amused. _i thought you’d never ask,_ she crooned. She smiled for a moment, but it quickly faded into a look of the utmost seriousness. 

_but you already know my name, sweet child._

June stared into its eyes. They burned back with the heat of a raging wildfire. Her vision blurred and darkened and tunneled, just like they had in the cave, until all she could see was the grim woman. A tiny piece of information squirmed through the crevices of her brain to the surface, as if it was long lost knowledge she had always possessed. 

_you need only say it._

The thought rapidly evolved. It became like vomit, foul and viscous and rising like acid in her throat. Something inevitable, that she could either spit out or choke on. 

She was in no state to resist. The word pried her teeth apart from the inside, reaching out into the light from the recesses of her lungs. 

“Enchantress...”

The corpse was relieved, elated. It pushed itself forward, closed the gap between them. Cold, pale lips pressed eagerly against June’s.  


.

The sun hung above her head, bloated and blinding. It seared against her skin. Burning, peeling. Beneath her feet, fine-grit rocks and sand cut into her flesh. 

It took a long, long time for June to realize she had no shoes on. 

The revelation was quickly followed up with another, of a similar nature: that she wore only a loose shirt and boxer briefs, likely retrieved from the clothes she’d packed. But perhaps anything more would have overwhelmed her in the stifling heat. It bore down on her like a thick, fiery blanket. With each step she took, it only grew heavier. Her mouth was dry and blistered, eyes stinging from the dust, head pounding. Finally, she had to stop and sit on the ground, as uncomfortable as it was. Her whole body ached far too much for her to keep walking. 

The sun remained an impartial witness to her pain. 

Her eyes lifted to the horizon. Beyond the waves of invisible heat, large sandstone structures seemed like mere pebbles. And however far she’d walked, June never seemed any closer to them. Not that they were her destination, anyway. 

“...Where am I?” she finally asked the open air. The heat felt like speaking into a heavy carpet, like gravity itself pushed her voice into the dirt. In this vast, empty desert, surrounded by nobody, she may have not even been speaking at all. 

Regardless, _It_ answered. 

_i do not understand the question, my little moon,_ the bodiless voice replied, _we are here._

“But where...is here?”

Silence. The old god pondered an answer. 

_the world has changed much since my time,_ it admitted finally, _and i was unfamiliar with the topography of the northern lands to begin with._

“So we’re lost?” June groaned. 

_we are not lost._ It sounded mildly offended. _we are wandering. you wanted to be free of that place, and so i freed you._

“H...How? I don’t...remember...” Thinking at all in this heat was painful. But trying to remember had about as much success as trying to swim in molasses. The longer June tried to recall, the heavier her head felt, and the more she began to think that maybe the memory just wasn’t there at all.

The old god seemed to sense her confusion. 

_even in your simple tongue, my name will curse you,_ she warned, _once said, it will forever remain behind one’s teeth. even i cannot say it without repercussion._

June tried to understand, but she just felt her head spin even quicker. “So I’m...cursed?”

_possessed would be a more apt term,_

The young archaeologist gasped quietly as a shiver ran up her spine, like someone dragged icy fingertips up to the nape of her neck. She stared down at her bare arms, her scabbed and scarred hands still recovering from her fall. They were her own, they were _her_ hands — and yet something settled inside them, inside her whole body, deeper than even her bones were. Something shrugged into her, wore her like a jacket. The acknowledgement of such a violating fact made June feel limp all over. 

_but,_ continued this thing, this thing that wore her, _your so-called doctors have other opinions._

“They do...?”

_yes. but they are wrong. you would be wise not to listen to them._

June scoffed humorlessly. She watched a tiny lizard slither through the earth’s rubble. “I would have been wise not to climb into that cave.”

A displeased hiss suddenly filled her mind, like the trill of a rattlesnake. Suddenly, even in the sun, she felt cold and breathless. She held her head in her hands as the pain grew from dull to monumental, so quick it was dizzying. Inside her skull, something took hold of her brain and _squeezed_. 

_my little moon doesn’t approve?_ it snarled, _spoilt thing. you’d be dead if it weren’t for me._

June whimpered pitifully. Heat flooded her face. Blood dripped freely from her nose and onto the ground between her feet. The little lizard tasted the corruption in the air and scuttled away.

“S...top...”

_even in the dark, i saw you. broken. afraid. pathetic. you would have died a slow death, a lonely death, but i made you whole again. i gave you your life, and i can take it away._

June felt her muscles tense and lock up all at once. A strong convulsion ran up her spine and rattled her whole body. For a split second, her vision burned white and her mouth tasted acidic. A repeat of her sorry state when she was hauled out of the chasm. 

Then she regained control, as if nothing had happened. Save for the way her hands still trembled and twitched. She slumped against a large rock and blinked vacantly at the sky. If she wasn’t so dehydrated, she could have cried. 

Her puppeteer seemed satisfied with this. The pressure on her brain released — her nose stopped dripping relentlessly and slowed to a final swell of blood. Finally she had the freedom to catch her breath. 

_forgive me..._ It sounded less like a plea, more like a demand. From nowhere, the sensation of cold fingers wrapped around her neck. No pressure, no squeezing. But it was possessive, it was threatening. When June reached up to pry them off, she found there to be nothing physically there. 

She stared down at her hands. They trembled in the aftermath of her seizure. Her vision pulsed, a synesthetic reaction to the residual pain wracking her body. 

The creature inside her was right. She was weak, and if it weren’t for this...possession, she’d be dead.

Acknowledging this was soul-crushing. June couldn’t say there were many times in her life where she’d felt helpless, but this was certainly one of them. 

Even now, bolstered up by whatever powers the thing inside her harbored, she wasn’t perfect. Tremors and spasms ran through her muscles like electric currents and offered her some amount of insight into her condition. Every other step hurt, every movement felt...aided. Like the girl was moving June’s arms and legs for her; wearing a body that was otherwise limp and malleable. 

_yes,_ the voice cooed, when it became clear that June would watch her tongue now — or perhaps just too weak to talk back, _oh how well-behaved you are, my little moon..._

Hearing it talk like that made her stomach churn. The cadence was like bugs crawling over her skin, and the words themselves dripped with something sickly and toxic. 

June drew her knees up close to her chest. But the other girl wasn’t done goading. 

_i see how much you crave it,_ she purred. Like a finger stroking the spine of a book, an involuntary shudder passed across the side of her brain — the resulting spasm snapped June’s head to the side, nearly cracking her temple against the rock. _to be praised. acknowledged. loved. it has been so absent from your life..._

Still recovering from the way her head spun, June grit her teeth and shut her eyes. “I d...on’t need you to tell m...me what I know...” she stammered. 

_but don’t you see?_ it pressed, _we are one and the same. i so miss the throng of devoted worshippers, june. nothing tastes sweeter than the flesh of one who loves you, or richer than that of those that fear you..._

June didn’t answer. She was trying to decide if her new companion was talking about sex or cannibalism. It could’ve easily been an allegory for both. 

A soft chuckle drifted through her mind — she felt compelled to mimic it, but kept her mouth shut. Apparently this thing could read her thoughts too...the lack of an answer to the query didn’t put her at ease. 

_if you continue to behave, then perhaps we can share..._ it offered, _i always longed for one who would rule at my side, but it was never easy finding another wolf amongst sheep. and you, june moone, would be so equally adored and feared..._

“I don’t w...want to be feared.”

_but you want to be loved, and what difference is there between the two?_

June didn’t answer. She stared down at her hands, and fought not to see double. 

The raw, pink scar tissue was pale and bright against her tanned skin. In her carelessness, what little scabbing was left had been scraped away, and the wounds bled again. But they were shallow, insignificant. A testament to how much time had passed since the friction of the rope burned into her. 

June’s stomach dropped. 

“H-How long has it been?” 

The voice in her head hummed, making a show of pondering out loud. _i believe three phases of the moon. nearly four. months, you call them? such a very long time to be asleep._

June hid her face against her arms and groaned. “Oh my god.” 

_yes, humans nowadays have such an odd approach to preserving the weak and the frail. i’ve seen many fall down steps ravines, only to perish at the bottom._

Hearing the unlikelihood of her survival made bile rise in June’s throat. She knew the thing curled up inside her brain could feel her unease, and yet it continued to gloat. 

_but you did not perish. not immediately. my little moon continued to shine just long enough for me to reach out and save her. and now she is mine. you are mine, june._

Fear squirmed in her chest like a worm, like a parasite burrowing deeper. This was wrong and horrific and all kinds of fucked up, and yet June didn’t have the energy to panic. She was too exhausted, too hot, too dehydrated. 

But the fear was there, right next to misery. June curled her arms around her head. As if she could hide from the creature. 

Cold, incorporeal fingertips ghosted through her hair. They were trying to be a comfort, but really they just made her feel like she was a dog being pet. But she already knew better than to bat them away. 

“You said we were north,” she finally said. Her voice was muffled against her knees, but she knew her companion would be able to hear her regardless. 

_yes,_ it hummed, _further north than i have ever travelled, admittedly. this biome is very...unfamiliar to me._

“It doesn’t look anything like Peru. Maybe it’s Mexico, but...” June looked up to take another cursory glance around, “It looks like American desert. Texas, maybe...”

There was a long pause in her head, and then: _i do not know what any of these words mean, my moon._

“It means we’re both a long way from home.” 

_i see..._

And likely a very long way from water. Too far for June to travel by herself. She’d die of thirst long before she reached any semblance of civilization, or she’d collapse in another fit and perish beneath the sun. Both wholly undesirable ways to go. 

Inside her, the essence of the young god bristled and trilled and purred in a cacophony of emotions. June could not decipher a single one of them. The din sounded like a plague of locusts. 

_you are exhausted,_ the voice said to her. Those ghostly fingers caressed her face, cupped her jaw and tilted her head up. June almost swore she could feel the icy breath against her cheek. _you are hungry. you need water. i can bring you to these things, june._

“I just...I just want to go home...” She was getting frantic, a lump forming in her throat like the plastic of the intubation tube. 

_yes, yes, i know..._ hummed the other girl. She sounded vaguely distracted. Like she was looking for something. _my name, june. you know it, you’ve always known it. you just need to say it._

There it was again, the primordial vomit behind her teeth. Fingers clawing up out of her throat, desperate to get out. But June wouldn’t fight it, nor consider that maybe she should. All she wanted right now was home. “Ench—”

Another quick spasm shot through her brain. Her head shuddered and tilted against her will, and she groaned through grit teeth. Fingers splayed against her cerebral cortex, filing through her like she was a cabinet of information. 

In the moment, a focal seizure seemed like a small price to pay for getting back home. 

This time, the word escaped without her aid. June merely opened her mouth again, and her voice carried away in the dry winds. She didn’t even hear herself say it, but she must’ve done, because her vision flickered like a faulty lightbulb. In the darkness, a much more solid hand slid up to grip her jaw. It would bruise, maybe. June finally felt herself tear up — though the reasons were unclear, it was impossible not to cry. 

_so obedient..._

Even in total blindness, June was ready for the affronting sensation of an eager kiss. And this time, despite her tears and her better judgement, she returned it.


End file.
